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Clyde RIver ferry: Business Scotland interview with CalMac’s Martin Dorchester

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Brisbane City Cat 1

A generally interesting recent programme on Scotland and the shipping industry in the Business Scotland series on BBC Radio Scotland with Douglas Fraser, drew its expert interviewees from the Scottish state owned companies of Caledonian MacBrayne Limited [CalMac] and Caledonian Maritime Assets Limited [CMAL].

CMAL’s former CEO, Guy Platten, now CEO of the UK Chamber of Shipping topped the programme; and CalMac’s current CEO, Martin Dorchester, tailed it.

Dorchester began by noting the changes in Calmac’s services to date and to come. He mentioned that ‘we’ have new tonnage coming into the fleet this summer and that ‘we’ therefore have surplus redundant tonnage to deploy, he is quite wrong on both counts.

CalMac and CMAL are two distinct corporate identities, although both have the same sole shareholder – the Scottish Government.

The vessels belong to CMAL. They are its assets and liabilities. They are not legitimately CalMac’s fleet, nor is there any allowable business reason why CalMac should see them in that light or accept any responsibility for them. Moreover CMAL is not within the corporate structure of the David MacBrayne Group of state owned maritime businesses, of which CalMac is the engine, but is independently incorporated.

The new tonnage is CMAL’s tonnage, although the new vessels will be used in CalMac’s leasing requirements and were, in some cases controversially, commissioned for specific CalMac routes.

The redundant tonnage is CMAL’s problem to deploy. Unless any of it offers a serious business advantage to any potential new project of CalMac’s – which might not qualify for public subsidy but be straightforward commercial operations – it would be suicidal to take over redundant tonnage from your leasing company unless its use was a surefire commercial winner.

‘Best value’, the mantra of public sector contracts these days, is flatly against any such ‘helpful’ arrangement carrying serious financial risk.

During the Business Scotland interview, Martin Dorchester mentioned one possible initiative – the establishment of a Clyde River ferry. Douglas Fraser also added at the end of the show, that Dorchester had said to him that CalMac is looking at going for contracts outside Scotland. [This is the subject of a separate article, published simultaneously.]

The Clyde River ferry proposition – spotting the wrong formula

CalMac is clearly in the foothills of looking at this one and has made that position clear to us.

There are two aspects of their thinking that need to be radically revised if they are to pursue the possibility.

If a Glasgow City River Ferry were to be successful, it would have to be fast, frequent, affordable and with strategically placed stops on the river, potentially raising infrastructural issues.

Looking at using redundant tonnage in the CMAL fleet, as new vessels come onstream this summer, is unlikely to fit the bill of a serious and commercial river ferry service.

Take the Portavadie to Tarbert vehicle and passenger ferry which is to be replaced this summer by one of the new diesel-electric hybrids.

The MV Isle of Cumbrae, currently serving the route, will then be redundant tonnage in the CMAL fleet. Her speed is 8.5 knots. She carries vehicles – not the purpose of a river ferry and not of this river ferry. This sort of boat would be expensive to run in fuel and crew costs – and in berthing infrastructure; and Dorchester says that CalMac do not see this service as a state subsidised one but only to be undertaken if it can be a commercial proposition.

There is a joke doing the rounds – that if CalMac are thinking of using MV Isle of Lewis on a Gourock to Glasgow City Centre route, it will top itself on the first bridge after the Erskine bridge.

There are no redundant boats coming free in CMAL’s portfolio this summer that we can see as capable of running an unsubsidised and commercial river ferry service.

Brisbane City Cat 2

The Clyde River ferry proposition – getting it right

The second weakness in CalMac’s thinking is its apparent inability mentally to get away from its Gourock-Dunoon area HQ.

It seems to be considering a river ‘ferry’ service operating from Gourock – which is in the Firth of Clyde not the River Clyde  – and to a single destination, possibly in the city centre, making for a passage of a substantial time.

As a commuter route, this would have to compete with reasonably fast roads into Glasgow on both sides of the Clyde; and with a rail service on the south side, including an express service, direct from Gourock into the city centre. An 8.5 knot vehicle and passenger ferry running from Gourock to the city centre would get nowhere near competing as a commuter service from the upper Firth of Clyde, with its road and rail competitors; nor could it be commercially viable.

The right service – not a river ‘ferry’ as CalMac appear to be considering it at the moment – but a river ‘bus’ service, operating exclusively within the less weather affected river on a commercially viable route – say from Scotstoun to Glasgow Green, via Braehead, Govan, the Riverside Transport Museum, the SECC, Pacific Quay and Victoria Bridge.

The Scotstoun extension might be a commuter-hours stop, with some lunchtime and evening add-ons. With BAE likely to develop Scotstoun and close Govan, this could be a very useful workforce commute route from and to the south bank.

An eastern termination stop at the Clyde Walkway bridge before the turn of the river at Glasgow Green would comfortably serve the south bank market as well.

This would be an eight stop route with no real meanders in the river, served by four boats – ideally five to cover refits and technical issues.

The Brisbane City Cat model

Brisbane City Cat 3

Australia’s Brisbane City Cat Service is a fantastic model. Their fibreglass, shallow draft, twin tube-hulled catamarans are made on the river. This is not expensive technology. The boats are well engined and manoeuverable, broad, squat and powerful with a low profile that offers less windage and a flat wake that causes no river bank wash erosion problems.

In a city almost four times the population of Glasgow, the Brisbane City Cat runs on a route of 24 stops from St Lucia to Hamilton, served by a fleet of around 17 boats, which allows for refits. There are now three generations of City Cats, with the second and third generation boats carrying around 162 passengers.

Commuters use the service because being on the river is therapeutic. Visitors use it because it makes the city completely manageable in the accessibility it offers.

The infrastructure is generally berthing at pontoons rising and falling on tethering piles in the river, with ramps from the shore side to the pontoons. There are little open but sheltered waiting rooms at the shorehead, lockable on the land side when off timetable.

An indication of how achievable the infrastructure is can be shown by the fact that in the cataclysmic flooding of the city in January 2011, City Cat saw much of its river infrastructure swept away. One month later, in Mid February, services restarted  using fifteen repaired wharves, By mid April, three months after the floods, six more wharves reopened, using rescued and repaired pontoons, leaving only three to be brought back into  service over the following months – a fabulous achievement that put the heart back in the city for whom the City Cats are a key signature.

So the infrastructure for this sort of enterprise need not in any way mean an initiative coming into service at the end 0f any long finger – and there is infrastructure available at several of the stops we suggest. It is such a pity that Glasgow will not have this sort of service for the Commonwealth Games. That would have bedded it in to the city’s transport culture in short order. The Brisbane service now offers free travel in a tight cluster of city centre terminals, to encourage visitors to get around the city and to use the route more widely.

Brisbane City Council is so proud of the service that they would probably be very helpful in sharing knowledge and performance facts with any potential operator of a Glasgow version.

Brisbane City Cat 4

It was noticeable that Douglas Fraser himself, in the interview with Martin Dorchester, twice repeated the personal hope that one day he could hop on a river service. People are certain to love the right sort of service.

It wouldn’t take long to build a committed audience – with success balanced on not trying to cut corners but doing a first class job, as a fitting signature for a great city. The pity would be if CalMac went for it with the wrong boats and the wrong formula, failed – and left government, city council and the general public convinced that such a service was not a goer.

It may not, in the end, prove the right thing for CalMac – it’s a very different sort of ferry proposition with a different mindset – but the right service with the right entrepreneur could be a stunning addition to Glasgow, putting the river back in the everyday life of the city. Who wouldn’t want to use it?

Note: The photographs accompanying the article above show the Brisbane City Cat service on the Brisbane River. The two with the liner in the background are at the new Hamilton North stop on the north bank of the river, at the eastern end of the City Cat route. The liner is at Brisbane’s new Portside Wharf cruise line terminal, between Brett’s Wharf and Hamilton North. The third shot shows the ferry coming into the Apollo Road stop, on its way to the eastern end of the route. The final shot shows a City Cat at night against Brisbane’s signature Storey Bridge – in a city spoiled for choice in fabulous bridge architecture. The shots show the basic formula for the boats – the broad, squat design; the small open foredeck for observation in the regular good weather; a larger open stern deck; and an enclosed centre cabin with seated accommodation; design; and the flat, non-kicking wake.


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